The Land Of St. George

Georgia is the former Soviet republic that is indirectly named for one of the most popular saints, St. George. It is said that the name of the country did not actually originate from the saint, but the flag is the Cross of St. George and the image of St. George slaying the Dragon is on a variant national flag.

Georgia was one of the first nations to become Christian. St. George was a Roman legionnaire who was martyred for his Christian faith, and is also the patron saint of England, as well as being celebrated in many other lands.

The reason that Ireland's St. Patrick seems to be so predominant among saints is that these are Catholic saints, and Ireland is still Catholic. England has St. George, Wales St. David and Scotland St. Andrew, but these nations have long since gone Protestant, and Protestants believe that an intermediary to God is unnecessary and so are not as much into saints.

Georgia is mostly Eastern Orthodox by religion, which split from Catholicism in 1054, nearly 500 years before the Protestants did. There are eastern Orthodox saints, but St. George, although that is who the country was named for, is also a reminder of it's earlier Catholic days.

Notice how the flag of Georgia has the same red cross-on-white Cross of St. George as the flag of England, which is not the same as the flag of Britain.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Georgia_(country)#/media/File:Flag_of_Georgia.svg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_England#/media/File:Flag_of_England.svg

Georgia also reverses the red and white.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Georgia_(country)#/media/File:Flag_of_the_Georgian_Armed_Forces.svg

This standard shows St. George as the dragon slayer.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Georgia_(country)#/media/File:Standard_of_the_President_of_Georgia.svg

Tbilsi is the capital city of Georgia. it is a very old city that has been controlled by many empires down through the centuries. Georgia is a small country with Russia to the north, Iran to the southeast, Turkey to the southwest, and the Arab nations further south. It has been ruled, at one time or another, by all of them. it has also seen conquerors from further east, particularly the Mongols and the Timurids.

Built on a crag overlooking the Old Town of Tbilsi is the Narikala Fortress, which has been there since the Fourth Century. Does the Narikala Fortress remind anyone of Edinburgh Castle?

There are multiple scenes following. To see the scenes, after the first one, you must first click the up arrow, ^, before you can move on to the next scene by clicking the right or forward arrow, >. After clicking the up arrow, you can then hide the previews of successive scenes, if you wish.

https://www.google.com/maps/@41.6874226,44.8103516,3a,75y,99.46h,90t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipMMpYRv35D3XO-PYRoAMAxDmy4ao5um5qHOwEc1!2e10!3e11!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipMMpYRv35D3XO-PYRoAMAxDmy4ao5um5qHOwEc1%3Dw203-h100-k-no-pi-0-ya69.57629-ro-0-fo100!7i8000!8i4000

This is Trinity Cathedral in Tbilsi, which is of recent construction.

https://www.google.com/maps/@41.6978533,44.8171133,3a,75y,114.9h,90t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipNfzcAfUrgw-pB2MnEwx0w-g8JvdSXGXHftwe-a!2e10!3e11!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipNfzcAfUrgw-pB2MnEwx0w-g8JvdSXGXHftwe-a%3Dw203-h100-k-no-pi-0-ya137.86853-ro0-fo100!7i11264!8i3614

Here are some more scenes around the central area of Tbilsi, but north of the Old Town.

https://www.google.com/maps/@41.7000279,44.7966634,3a,75y,173.23h,90t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipPoJ5B9UzbvFPU3mnAZc26e8zBUOgvMggNxWrd_!2e10!3e11!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipPoJ5B9UzbvFPU3mnAZc26e8zBUOgvMggNxWrd_%3Dw203-h100-k-no-pi1.7441286-ya174.99002-ro-1.884642-fo100!7i7200!8i3600

This is further north, into the newer part of Tbilsi.

https://www.google.com/maps/@41.709206,44.7851563,3a,75y,79.5h,92.93t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipPj2NEP_99JWEBJIq5ZTUm-v8waSj3n44TlU6FI!2e10!3e11!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipPj2NEP_99JWEBJIq5ZTUm-v8waSj3n44TlU6FI%3Dw203-h100-k-no-pi-0.2738673-ya79.44609-ro-0.88691956-fo100!7i7200!8i3600

There is a city in Georgia called Gori. It is known as the birthplace of Josef Stalin, and he is still celebrated here. Georgians were displeased when Nikita Khrushchev succeeded Stalin in 1953, and made a speech denouncing him, and began the process of de-stalinization of the Soviet Union. Like Tbilsi, Gori is an old city with a fortress high above the city.

https://www.google.com/maps/@41.9856111,44.1130133,3a,75y,131.77h,90t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipPrcSN1iGu7Cx3H3s-d6Nf183fQ0aANyDI2PNav!2e10!3e11!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipPrcSN1iGu7Cx3H3s-d6Nf183fQ0aANyDI2PNav%3Dw203-h100-k-no-pi-0-ya208.23315-ro0-fo100!7i8000!8i4000

Another Georgian with a familiar name is that of Eduard Shevardnadze. When Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in 1985, everything changed in the Soviet Union. He began the reforms of Glasnost and Perestroika. The long-time foreign minister, Andrei Gromyko, who had been the architect of the hard-line policy toward the west, was replaced by Shevardnadze. For Gromyko. who was an old and familiar representative of the Soviet Union to the outside world, the mostly-ceremonial position of president was created.

It was Eduard Shevardnadze, a native Georgian, who oversaw the re-unification of Germany, which so many people never thought that they would see in their lifetimes. It was also Shevardnadze who oversaw the end of the Soviet military campaign in Afghanistan.

I remember when he shocked everyone by suddenly resigning from Gorbachev's government, explaining that dictatorship was coming and he didn't want to be part of it. Sure enough, in the summer of 1991, there was a coup attempt against Gorbachev, by remaining hard-line Communists who did not like his reforms. The coup attempt was unsuccessful, but it would accelerate the end of the Soviet Union and it was what made Boris Yeltsin, who would succeed Gorbachev, a hero. Shevardnadze later became president of an independent Georgia.

When Georgia has been in the western news in recent years, it was most often for the two regions that wanted to separate from it after it became independent following the end of the Soviet Union. The regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia then declared their independence from the newly-independent Georgia. The Government of Georgia tried to stop the secession of these two territories but Russia supported them. In 2008, Georgia launched a military campaign to regain these two regions but Russia intervened militarily to support their independence.

Far Outer Mathematics

We have already seen what I refer to as "Outer Mathematics". This has been added to that section of the compound posting "Mind-Bending Cosmology", on this blog.

We use mathematics to describe the world around us. To be able to describe something using mathematics we must completely understand it. Once we do we can do all kinds of useful calculations because everything we know operates by the same mathematics.

But we do not have unlimited capacity to understand the world around us. Our minds have a certain complexity and we can only understand that which is less complex than our minds. Anything that is more complex than our minds we would not be able to understand enough to apply mathematics to it because we would have to be "smarter than ourselves", which is impossible.

Somewhere out there is a formula that describes everything that you do. You cannot access it because it deals with your mind's own complexity and this would require you to be "smarter than yourself", which is impossible. But yet this unseen formula must operate by the usual mathematics. 

This is what I refer to as "outer mathematics", mathematics which must exist but which is beyond our grasp because of our own limited complexity. All of textbook mathematics is "inner mathematics", which is within our grasp.

But aside from this set of "outer mathematics" there must be a still more distant set of outer mathematics. As stated we use mathematics because it effectively describes the world around us. But what if that world, actually the entire universe, had been different? 

The matter that all except particle physicists deal with is made of atoms. We could say that atoms are "exclusive" so the mathematics that works for us uses numbers and has the basic operations; addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, exponents, roots, etc. What I mean by "exclusive" is that atoms, and the matter that is composed of them, does not come into existence spontaneously and stays as it is until something changes it.

The numbers that we use have no real existence until they are manifested in some way. There is no such thing as the number six that we can see but we see it whenever we have six of something. But any number must exist whether it is manifested by anything or not. Consider the number 37,683,992,651,801,384,161,079,177,209,184. Let's refer to this number as "W". It may be that nowhere in the universe is this number manifested anywhere, but it is still just as much a number nonetheless because it could potentially be manifested. Just as a parking space still exists whether or not there is a car in it.

The mathematics that we use, both inner and outer mathematics, works for us because the matter that we deal with is as it is, matter could be said to be "exclusive". But what if matter, or the entire universe, was completely different?

There would still be mathematics that described it although it would be completely different from the mathematics that we are using. If matter, or whatever that universe was made of, was non-exclusive then there would be no reason for the addition, subtraction and, so on that we use. If that universe was somehow immeasurable or unquantifiable mathematics might express the effect that it has on the living beings rather than what it is actually made of.

Mathematics is inevitably related to scarcity, of not having everything that we need or want and of having to labor to get what we don't have or build what doesn't yet exist or get to somewhere other than where we are. Have you ever noticed that there is no mention of mathematics in Heaven? In Heaven we will have everything we want so why would we have any need to count or calculate?

The universe of atoms, electric charges and, electromagnetic radiation that we have is just one of an infinite number of possibilities that the universe could have been. It is like rolling dice. The numbers that came up are our universe. The numbers that didn't come up are all of the universes that never physically existed, but yet these numbers still exist.

But the mathematics, completely different from our own, that would have described them must nonetheless still exist. Just as we saw with the number "W" above, a number still exists whether it is manifested or not and the mathematics, which we cannot begin to imagine, of every different universe that never actually existed must also still exist.

This is what I refer to as "far outer mathematics". It is the mathematics of would-have-been universes and physical realms that do not even use the same basic operations as the mathematics that we use. What we could call "near outer mathematics" is, as explained above, mathematics that would use the same basic operations but is beyond our reach because we could not completely understand something whose complexity is greater than our own.

The Temple Mount In The News

The Temple Mount in Jerusalem was in the news again recently. The site is generally considered as being in Jerusalem but is administered by a Jordanian organization, which is allowed by Israel to keep the peace. Jews and other non-Moslems are allowed to visit the Temple Mount during certain hours, aside from having the Western Wall area just below the Temple Mount, but Moslems took exception to an Israeli government minister visiting the site. Does anyone remember how Ariel Sharon, former Israeli Prime Minister, taking a highly-publicized walk on the Temple Mount in 2000 led to the Second Intifada?

The Temple Mount, as the name implies, is the retaining wall of the final Jewish Temple in Jerusalem, and the elevated area that it encloses. The final Temple was the Third Temple. It was destroyed by the Romans a few decades after the time of Jesus in punishment for an uprising against Roman rule.

Image from Google Earth.

Jesus himself foretold the coming destruction of the Temple, which seemed ludicrous to the religious establishment. He said the Temple would be so completely destroyed that "not one stone would remain upon another". Indeed what happened is that, during the uprising, the wooden parts of the Temple caught fire. The heat melted gold objects in the Temple so that gold flowed down between the foundation stones. After the fire went out the Romans, looking for the gold, pried the foundation stones apart so that indeed "not one stone remained upon another".

The original Temple, or Solomon's Temple, was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar, when the Jews were taken into exile in Babylon. Persia later conquered Babylon and the Jews that wanted to were allowed to return. They built the Second Temple on the site of the one that had been destroyed. But the Second Temple was not as elaborate as the First.

After a few centuries King Herod, ruler of the Jews as long as he stayed in favor with the Romans, decided to dismantle the Second Temple to build one that would be at least as grand as the First Temple. 

The First and Second Temples were at the top of a hill called Mount Moriah. Herod surrounded Mount Moriah with a retaining wall made of massive stones. Then he filled in the gaps with soil and built the magnificent Temple atop the new Temple Mount. The Temple was destroyed as described above but the retaining wall and the Temple Mount remain to this day.

The Temple Mount is surely the most valuable piece of real estate in the world. Many places across the world are considered as sacred, but most sacred places are sacred to only one religion. The Temple Mount is so sacred that it is sacred to three religions. Jews, Christians and, Moslems all consider the site as highly sacred. There were no Moslems when Herod's Temple was built but Moslems had control of the site for many centuries after the end of the Roman Empire and built the two mosques that stand on the site today.

After the Second World War the world powers supported the nation of Israel being reestablished as a homeland for the Jews. There were already Jews in Palestine but this officially brought it back to being a nation, just as it had been in ancient times. The Arab Palestinians who lived there were, of course, not pleased at all and the new state was attacked almost immediately. There was another war, in 1967, in which Israel captured the Old City of Jerusalem, including the Temple Mount, and that is where the present troubles begin.

Here is our visit to it, which includes my own spiritual theory about the Temple Mount. This is "Esau And The Temple Mount":

www.markmeeksideas.blogspot.com/2016/02/esau-and-temple-mount.html?m=0 

The general consensus among students of Bible prophecy is that the Temple must be rebuilt for the End Times because the Antichrist will go into the Temple of God and claim to be God. The Bible does not state that the Temple will be rebuilt but the implication is that it must be. Honestly I have some doubt over whether the Temple must be rebuilt, or if that prophecy might mean any prominent cathedral. As it is now the Temple Mount works like an open-air Temple. Here is a link to my point of view:

www.markmeeksideas.blogspot.com/2021/10/does-temple-really-have-to-be-rebuilt.html?m=0

If you are interested in the Temple Mount you will probably also be interested in "The Tomb Of The Patriarchs". Here is a link to it:

www.markmeeksideas.blogspot.com/2017/05/the-tomb-of-patriarchs.html?m=0

Grand Island, NY, the large island in the Niagara River formed where the river splits in two and later comes back together again, was considered as a possible homeland for the Jews before Israel was reestablished in 1948. It was to be named "Ararat" but not many Jews took an interest.

Image from Google Earth 

Why So Many People Died In Buffalo

Many of the people who died in the recent horrific Buffalo blizzard died because the streets were impassable and no one could get to them. Emergency vehicles couldn't get through the snow. The scandal has already begun about Buffalo being prepared for the storm. And keep in mind that snow is very familiar to Buffalo.

(Note-I know there is a grammatical rule that sentences should not begin with "And" but I don't agree with it).

The area all around Buffalo suffered from the snow and cold. What is interesting is how the deaths were heavily concentrated in Buffalo, relatively to the proportion of the population. The streets of the suburbs outside Buffalo got plowed much better than in Buffalo itself, so that emergency vehicles in the suburbs had a much better chance of getting through.

What it all came down to, of course, is money. The suburbs, where fewer people died, had money for enough snowplows to keep the streets clear enough for emergency vehicles to get through. Buffalo, where many people died, didn't have money for enough plows to keep the streets clear, and the emergency vehicles couldn't get through.

The reason is a matter of urban politics. What happens is that people who can afford it move out to the suburbs, which are separate towns and cities from Buffalo. This means that the local taxes paid by those who have moved are now paid to the suburb, and lost to Buffalo. Since living costs tend to be higher, on average, in the suburbs this means that the ones that move tend to be the ones that can afford it. This builds up wealth in the suburbs and impoverishes the city.

You might be thinking that it would be unfair to take revenue away from one city and give it to another. But what has to be understood here is that the suburbs of Buffalo are not really separate towns and cities because they likely would not exist if not for Buffalo.

Take Cheektowaga, for example, which is immediately east of Buffalo. It has no "downtown", of older buildings, of it's own, only a modern commercial strip. What this indicates is that Cheektowaga is an extension of Buffalo and wouldn't exist without Buffalo.

The same is true of Amherst and West Seneca. There is no "downtown" of older buildings in either, to indicate that it would have existed separately without Buffalo. Tonawanda, Williamsville and, Lancaster do have central business areas with older buildings, and would have existed as towns without Buffalo, but likely wouldn't have grown as they have without being part of the Buffalo metropolitan area.

Is it right for children to take wealth away, leaving their parents impoverished, forgetting that they wouldn't exist if not for their parents?

What I am thinking of is how Toronto has undergone periodic rounds of consolidation as it's metropolitan area has grown, the most recent being in 1998. Some readers may remember when Toronto was often referred to as "Metro", which was before the last consolidation. Original towns and cities keep their identity but all are under the same city government and all taxes go into the same pot. People who work for local government may naturally be opposed to it because it may mean demotion or losing their jobs.

This is not suggesting just copying Toronto but I believe that the best thing is to adapt this to work for Buffalo. Toronto's consolidations are described in the Wikipedia article " Amalgamation Of Toronto".

The Political Situations In Brazil And Israel

BRAZIL

The conservative president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, lost election to former president Lula da Silva. The election was close but, by virtually all accounts, it was legitimate.

Bolsonaro has support that exceeds that of Donald Trump, in the U.S. Millions of Brazilians just couldn't believe that he had lost the election. There were demonstrations in front of military bases, people asking the military to take control and keep Bolsonaro in office. Bolsonaro himself expressed skepticism of the process of democracy similar to that of Donald Trump while he was U.S. President. It should come as no surprise that Trump and Bolsonaro are friends.

What could be going on here? Brazil has been looked to as one of the world's largest democracies.

To understand this we have to understand what we saw in "The Theory Of Kings", April 2022. With modern constitutions and democracy it may appear that the world has mostly done away with kings and queens, or at least confined them within the constitution as "constitutional monarchs". 

But we haven't. Societies have been ruled by kings and queens and emperors for thousands of years, and they are not going away just because a constitution has been drafted. All that we do today is call monarchs by different names.

The French Revolution, of 1789, did open the modern political era by having the king and queen of France overthrown and guillotined, and replaced by a republic. The objective of the revolution was to eliminate kings and queens altogether, but it was only a partial success. 

Not too many countries are monarchies today, and the majority of those that are tend to be constitutional monarchies. But instead of actual kings we get demagogues that act like kings, and are really kings in all but name. Even in democracies these demagogues tend to alternate with truly democratic leaders. The democratic leaders represent after the French Revolution while the demagogues represent before the revolution.

Again being that monarchy has been only partially eliminated since the French Revolution my belief is that a country is better off having a constitutional monarchy, rather than no monarchy at all. A country with a constitutional monarch is less likely to end up with a demagogue ruler that acts like a king.

To understand the un-democratic support behind Jair Bolsonaro we have to understand that Brazil was at one time an empire, and before that it was an autonomous kingdom as part of the Portuguese Empire.

Brazil's capital of Rio De Janeiro was once actually the capital of the entire Portuguese Empire, when Portugal itself was threatened by the forces of Napoleon the capital was moved to Brazil. After Brazil gained independence from Portugal it became an empire itself, rather than a republic, and for a time ruled what is now Uruguay.

To show how important the French Revolution is in opening the modern political era the Brazilian Empire was ultimately overthrown, and Brazil became a republic, in 1889, which is the centennial of the French Revolution.

So to understand the undemocratic support behind Jair Bolsonaro we have to understand Brazil's history of being an empire and that he is really Dom Pedro III.

ISRAEL

Israel now has it's most religious and right-wing government ever. What is happening is really simple. We saw in the posting "The Great Revolution Of Our Time", January 2017, how it was the Iranian Revolution, which began in 1979, that turned the tide of the world moving, apparently inexorably, away from religion toward secularism back toward religion. But this applies to all religions, not only Islam.

The Iranian Revolution has arrived in, of all places, Israel.